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Tuesday, 16 September 2014
European Union: Social Justice Report, A Cross-National Comparison; Greece
Thanks to A Gael in Greece blog for bringing this Bertelsmann Foundation report to my attention.
See the full report (pdf)
Greece in Music and Song, James McNeish
About the recordings made in 1961 by James McNeish
I was in contact with James McNeish for a period (now Sir James McNeish), when he was writing his book "Dance of the Peacocks" , in which I am quoted, in connection with Czechoslovakia. I had no idea at the time about his recording activities in Greece.
About "Dance of the Peacocks":
"The true story of five talented young men in exile in the time of Hitler and Mao Tse-Tung.
'Altogether they knew five wars, three revolutions and - in the case of Ian Milner, accused in the Cold War of being a spy - a slander.'
Regarded by one critic as 'the best book published in New Zealand in the last twenty years', this is a fascinating story based on letters, diaries and interviews in several countries. It is the story of a group of Rhodes scholars, five young men - James Bertram, Geoffrey Cox, Dan Davin, Ian Milner, John Mulgan - caught up in the turmoil of their times: Spain, Hitler's Germany, Greece and North Africa, Eastern Europe, China. They left New Zealand in the thirties for 'the dreaming spires' of Oxford. War intervened. Only one returned".
Monday, 15 September 2014
Joao Magueijo on the "unrestrained" English
As others see us!
"Unrestrained wild beasts, totally out of control".
The Sunday Times (14 September) carried an article on the Portuguese professor's new book on the English, British culture, society and lifestyle. Not flattering.
So did the Mail:
"A best-selling book written by a Portuguese academic has offered a dismal portrayal of English people, calling them 'unrestrained wild beasts who eat food so greasy it needs detergent'.
Joao Magueijo, 47, a physics professor at Imperial College London, has seen his book, Bifes Mal Passados (Undercooked Beef) sell more than 20,000 copies in his native country".
Update, The Guardian
Reminds me of what the Corfiot Nicander Nucius observed back in the mid sixteenth century.
Nucius (Nikandros Noukios), the Corfiot traveller, visited England in 1545 and 1546.
“The race of men indeed is fair, inclining to a light colour; in their persons they are tall and erect; the hair of their beard and head is of a golden hue; their eyes blue, for the most part, and their cheeks are ruddy; they are martial and valorous, and generally tall; flesh-eaters, and insatiable of animal food; sottish and unrestrained in their appetites; full of suspicion.”
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